Monday, October 08, 2018

A SUSAN RICE SENATE RUN IN MAINE? DEMOCRATS, DON'T DO THIS.

If this is a plan, it's a bad plan, and if it's an effort to rattle the Republicans, it won't work:

Susan E. Rice, a former national security adviser to President Barack Obama, said Sunday that she will decide after the November elections whether to launch a bid to unseat Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), claiming the lawmaker has “betrayed women across this country.”

Rice first teased her interest with a one-word response — “Me” — to a question on Twitter last week about who wants to run for Senate in Maine when Collins’s seat is on the ballot in 2020. Rice subsequently seemed to back away from the idea but expressed openness to it while speaking Sunday at the New Yorker Festival in New York.

Rice doesn't live in Maine. She never has. If she wants to claim an attachment to a state where even people who've been full-time residents for a decade or more are often regarded as newcomers, this isn't going to cut it:

During her appearance in New York, Rice contended her ties to Maine “are long and deep.”

She noted that her grandparents arrived in the state from Jamaica in 1912, that she had yearly visits that began in childhood and that she now owns a home there.

“The last 20-so years I’ve been a homeowner in the state of Maine, so it’s not completely crazy,” she said....

Susan E. Rice was born on November 17, 1964, in Washington, D.C. She went on to study at Stanford University and the University of Oxford in Oxfordshire with a focus on international affairs. She worked with President Bill Clinton as part of the National Security Council and oversaw African affairs, later working at the Brookings Institution. In 2009, Rice joined President Barack Obama's Cabinet, receiving Senate confirmation to be U.N. ambassador. Later, she served as the national security adviser for the second term of the Obama administration.

Washington, California, England, Washington. No Maine.

Really, just don't.

Do we seriously want the race to defeat Susan Collins to be all about Benghazi and "unmasking"? Do we want all the resources of Fox News and the rest of the right-wing media dedicated to reelecting Collins? Do we want wingnut donor cash flooding into Maine from all over the country?

In last year's special Senate election in Alabama, the Democrat who upset Roy Moore wasn't a high-profile superstar who parachuted in -- it was Doug Jones, a lifelong Alabaman. In Texas, the Democrat who's giving Ted Cruz the fight of his life is Beto O'Rourke, El Paso born and bred. If you're not from their states, you'd probably never heard of Jones and O'Rourke until they ran. But one is a senator now and the other might be one soon.

Republicans get away with carpetbagging -- Michigan native Mitt Romney in Massachusetts and now Utah, New Jerseyan Greg Gianforte in Montana. It's harder for Democrats. Yes, Hillary Clinton pulled it off in her 2000 Senate race, but here in New York City, at least, we have a culture of welcoming new arrivals. Maine is very different.

Find a Mainer who can run a good race against Collins, and drop this terrible idea.